NEW YORK - A news helicopter covering a shooting Tuesday in Brooklyn clipped a building, spun out of control and crashed on a rooftop, but no one was seriously injured.

The helicopter had been sent to the scene by WNBC-TV. A reporter and two pilots were hospitalized, WNBC said.

Police said the chopper clipped a four-story building before crash landing on the roof of a two-story dwelling in the middle of a block.

When officers arrived, two of those aboard had exited the craft on their own; the third was trapped for a few minutes.

The victims were in stable condition Tuesday night, WNBC spokeswoman Liz Fischer said. No one on the ground was harmed.

Witnesses said the chopper sounded like a stuttering motorcycle before it went down.

"I could hear boop, boop, boop, like the sound of a motorcycle, but real loud," said Roger Green, who lives about a block from the crash site. "So I looked out the window, and it was spinning around out of control. And then it dropped down behind some trees."

The cause of the crash wasn't known.

Reporter Andrew Torres and the pilots, Russ Mowry and trainee Hassan Taan, are employees of Helinet Aviation Services, a California company, she said.

The shooting they were covering, which involved civilians and police officers, had been reported in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn.

Three civilians were shot but were not gravely injured, and three officers fired six shots, police said. The shooting was under investigation.

In 1986, a traffic reporter for WNBC radio in New York, Jane Dornacker, was killed when her helicopter crashed into the Hudson River. The pilot was critically injured.

Earlier that year, Dornacker and another pilot escaped unharmed when a WNBC traffic helicopter crashed into the Hackensack River in New Jersey.

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)